


Decay

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen, and she is ancient and worn and misses her narnia, lucy is an adult, she'll never get it back, the dragons are dying and the world starts anew and she refuses to ask after her crown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-23 23:16:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14343027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: The young prince looks at them and sees children. Lucy looks at the young prince and sees bone painted black, eyes that have just seen a Talking Beast. (She remembers a little girl under a red umbrella and a little boy with blood dripping from his lips.)Her hand twitches as Peter cooks his head. “We can wait a few years if you’d like”, he says and Lucy feels like looking in a mirror beyond the wardrobe. She smiles.(She can smell Aslan in every breath she takes, can hear the trees singing still, even as Susan isn’t Queen yet, a school girl in plaid)





	Decay

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration: http://cinemagorgeous.com/post/171259617595/dragon-bones-by-artist-stefan-koidl

> _dragon_  
>  draɡ(ə)n/  
> noun 
> 
> _1\. a mythical monster like a giant reptile. In European tradition the dragon is typically fire-breathing and tends to symbolize chaos or evil, whereas in East Asia it is usually a beneficent symbol of fertility, associated with water and the heavens. In Old Narnian tradition a creature so old and magical it cannot be looked at even by Children of Adam and Eve.  
> _
> 
> _2\. another term for flying lizard._
> 
>  

* * *

 

“We didn’t mean to leave”, Peter says when they have set foot in their home for the first time in a year, when Lucy has taken her first breath since the cupboard, when they row above the skeleton of a dragon, the trees still and silent as the English winter.

Lucy clings to Susan’s damp blouse, her knuckles as white as the stone crumbling into the river, swallowing their every sound. Below them, the bones lie in the river bed, its wings still stretched out. Lucy buries her head in Susan’s chest.

“What’s wrong?”, the dwarf asks, his red beard dirty and matted. Peter looks at Susan, who cards her hands through Lucy’s hair. “Remember this, Child of Narnia”, Edmund says, his voice deeper than usual, “the dragons will not bow, will not waver until the end of time. They are Narnia’s love, and only to them and Aslan your Kings and Queens shall bow.”

“It’s vile”, says Lucy. “Leaving it here to rot.”

 

 

The young prince looks at them and sees children. Lucy looks at the young prince and sees bone painted black, eyes that have just seen a Talking Beast. (She remembers a little girl under a red umbrella and a little boy with blood dripping from his lips.)

Her hand twitches as Peter cooks his head. “We can wait a few years if you’d like”, he says and Lucy feels like looking in a mirror beyond the wardrobe. She smiles.

(She can smell Aslan in every breath she takes, can hear the trees singing still, even as Susan isn’t Queen yet, a school girl in plaid)

 

 

Miraz doesn’t die wrapped in dragon bone and fear. Instead, Caspian spares his life and Lucy wants to show the man all the bones drowning in his rule. Edmund cracks his knuckles.

 

 

Susan, with her hands raw and bloody, a Queen’s hands that know arrows once more, braids Lucy’s hair and starts singing softly, the melody weaves itself into her fingers. Once, the song says, once Narnia’s love was born from molten stone and glowing starlight. Once, her devotion spread its wings and learned to fly, bones made of stone, scales made of her. Telmarine, Narnian, Talking Beast, avert your eyes and bow to her, for you are Narnia’s servant, it is rare she shows her love. Lucy asks about Caspian’s armour, her voice hushed by flames and exhaustion. Caspian bows his head and says nothing.

 

 

(Sometimes, when the alarms sounded and Lucy’s ears started ringing, sometimes when the sky was heavy and grey and suffocating, she’d smell fire and sizzling flesh and bow her head, her child - adult - hands shivering and numb.)

 

 

When they return, one - three - years later and Caspian has grown into his crown and beard, he wears nothing but a tunic and his smile. The King, Reepicheep tells her, later, when Eustace’ ranting has dissolved into mumbling and Edmund has fallen asleep with his head on Caspian’s shoulder, the king returned the bones to the mountains, to molten rock and starlight, left Narnia with dead bones on his back and regret in his stance and returned in nothing but a tunic and a ragged smile. This skeleton doesn’t belong in a shriveling, dying river, he’d told his people.

“Such a king”, Reepicheep says, “can be bowed to without fearing for one’s neck.”

Lucy smiles and thinks of Edmund’s words dripping red, Susan’s prosthetic clacking on the marble floor. “He is a good king, isn’t he?”

“He respects the dragons, your Majesty, even now that they are crumbling and dying, now that their stories speak only of greed.” 

 

 

Cousin Eustace is turned into a dragon, then and Lucy almost drops to her knees and starts praying. She doesn’t. Instead, she thinks of the lion, of the little boy wrapped in stone and land, of the kings beside her.

( _ **S**_ he doesn’t wish for her crown. It is a cupboard and a lifetime away, has withered under one thousand years of change. Susan’s bow is smooth in her hands and Rhindon doesn’t tremble in Edmund’s, the school children in their blood have gone to sleep.)

 

* * *

 

> _look at the beast, lose your eyes  
>  skin it, lose your hands   
>  wear its bones, lose your life   
>  \- Telmarine, you shan’t use our Narnia, she isn’t yours _

_[Editor’s note: this is the only surviving fragment of an old Narnian song, in the fashion the Kings and Queens of Old might have known, ca. 1000 aA]_


End file.
